'I hope that the crossword ends up as more than the sum of its parts'. Photograph: Getty Images/Hulton Archive

Puck has been setting for the Guardian since 2006 - not a long time in crossword years, but he is a firmly established favourite of many. As happy being blue as he is waxing literate, Puck would be incapable of producing a workaday crossword. Many of his puzzles have featured here - a hidden armadillo, for instance and better still the old-school euphemism "the other", and he's been in two of our For Beginners features, in the form of a concealed lech and the audacious soundalike of "he-whore" for HEE-HAW.

When/where do you create your puzzles?

In the land of Puck, wherever and whenever inspiration strikes. If it doesn't, I'll root through my notes and ideas or my reference materials until it does. Or else, as Fred (almost) said, I'll 'ave another cuppa tea. And that usually helps.

When did you get the crossword bug?

My maternal grandfather introduced me to crosswords when I was about seven or eight. When I stayed with my grandparents, I took his breakfast tray up to him in bed, along with the daily papers. I began by helping with the Daily Express Make You Very Cross-Word, which was barred and non-cryptic apart from some signalled anagrams. Soon I was pretending I hadn't got the answers in order to give my granddad a chance to solve some first.

Favourite clues are less easy to recall, since I am more puzzle- than clue-orientated. I do however like my clue for ESSES (13d in the Groundhog Day puzzle) for the way it epitomises the theme. I also fondly remember the clues for MEGACEPHALOUS (8d in 24,779), FLUSHING MEADOWS (24ac in 24,727) and SLIPWAYS (21/6d in 25,340).

Before I morph into Paul in front of your very eyes, I must add that I am fond of the clues for AILING (9ac in 24,616), DEPARTMENTAL (4/22d in 25,178), GOING (26ac in 24,575), THIEVERY (26ac in 25,131) and THOREAU (19d in 24,727).

Which other setters do you admire?

There are so many good setters around, all with their own individual styles, it seems unfair to pick out individuals. Having said that, the setter who first really inspired me was Araucaria. Even before he assumed the pseudonym, I loved his bank holiday specials and my first attempt at setting - some time in my teens - was a Christmas double puzzle themed around my family.

I admire Araucaria's cheek and ingenuity, his ability to retain a freshness after so many years of quality puzzles, and his penchant for often quite outrageously breaking the rules in new and challenging but cruciverbally fair ways. I also love and have been influenced by Paul's irrepressible sense of wordplay fun, and I admire Rufus's ability to produce the sheer volume of puzzles he has set at a consistent "beginner's cryptic" level - I have used them as examples when teaching people How to Solve Cryptic Crosswords.

What makes a successful clue?

I must admit I really think more in terms of the crossword as a whole, and whether that is successful or not. I see each clue in that context.

Setting crosswords is very different from a clue-writing competition where one clue and solution exist in isolation. I'm always looking to produce a set of fair fun clues using a wide range of devices rather than outstanding clues in their own right. I hope that the crossword ends up as more than the sum of its parts.

And what makes an unsuccessful clue?

I'm not happy myself with a clue that has a poor or clunky surface reading, one with more than one possible solution, or one where a solver cannot fairly deduce the answer within a libertarian approach to the Ximenean "rules" of cryptic crosswords.

How did you learn?

I taught myself, improving gradually through practice and perseverance. Looking back, my first efforts were overambitious and inconsistent. This was certainly the opinion of the then Guardian crossword editor John Perkin, who kindly indicated where and how I needed to improve on my first submission to the paper.

He suggested I got experience elsewhere, so after lots more practice I answered an ad in the Times and began setting a weekly puzzle for a medical magazine. I learned quickly on the job. All the puzzles had to be medically themed, so Black's Medical Dictionary, Gray's Anatomy and Mims soon joined my reference library and I had fun interweaving other themes and compiling special puzzles for bank holidays and other occasions.

I was especially pleased with managing to incorporate the longest word in Chambers, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, into a 15x15 grid by splitting it into seven parts clued individually, together with a clue for the whole word based on Macbeth's "way to dusty death". Eventually I reluctantly had to retire gracefully; work and other commitments meant I was too often burning the midnight oil to get puzzles in by the deadline.

My themes are not necessarily based on a personal area of interest. They just have to appeal to me as providing good material for a puzzle that will be fun to set and solve.

I like to approach themes from a quirky, left-field sense where possible, though, rather than resorting to a straightforward list of related items. Sometimes the themes appear during, rather than before, the setting process. The large-animals puzzle began from the idea of a "hippo campus" - suddenly I had "rhinos cope" and it developed organically from there.

One theme I've not used for a while is medicine - probably because I've set so many medically-related clues and maybe overdosed on it.

What do you think goes through a solver's mind when she sees that it's a Puck puzzle?

I can only guess that there is a wide range of reactions, from "Oh good, that'll be fun" to "Oh Puck!"

How did you choose your pseudonym?

I was looking for a name that would suggest a lot of mischief going down in my puzzles. My first thought was Loki, and it was only by a last-minute piece of good fortune that I decided on Puck instead for his lighter sense of mischievous playfulness.

I wrote stories and features for children's annuals rather than for the TV programmes themselves. The BBC sent us advance scripts of Doctor Who for source material and vetted our contributions, and it was at the time of the fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) with his assistants Sarah Jane and Leela.

I also wrote for annuals on such diverse topics as Basil Brush, Blake's 7, Danger Mouse, Danger UXB!, Question of Sport and Tiswas. The latter involved a visit to the ITV studios when the show was on live - luckily I escaped the cage and any randomly flung custard pies, but didn't escape having a drink afterwards with Chris Tarrant and the lovely Sally James.

Your profile also says you're inspired by 'Fiery Fred' Trueman, Scarborough FC, the Incredible String Band and the Kerry coastline. Could you describe what you see in each of them?

They are all things or people that I have been passionate about at one time or another. Fred Trueman - wild and untameable, and from God's own country; Scarborough FC - with a motto "No Battle No Victory", but going bust in 2007 due to rogue owners and huge debts; the Incredible String Band - eclectic and unpredictable, with an almost childlike magic; and the Kerry coastline - wild and untameable, on the very edge of Europe and partly inspiring the beautiful Song For Ireland.

For me they all seem to have had a sense of drama and inimitable spirit about them that have defied convention while taking their own road less travelled. Spirited and unpredictable, perhaps - like Puck?

What are the tools of your trade?

Many moons ago, I used mainly Chambers Dictionary and the brilliant Longman Crossword Key for finding words to fit a grid, and then pencil and eraser for word insertion followed by a typewriter with carbon paper for writing the clues. Until fairly recently I swore I'd never go all technological, but now I use Crossword Compiler software along with a few reference books and the internet.

I also had little notebooks for ideas for clues and themes, but when one got full I just started using Word documents instead. And I also carry ideas and themes around in my head, gestating for days, weeks or even sometimes years before the time is right for that particular creation to appear.

Pencil or pen?

I nearly always use pen when solving on paper, but pencil for more complex cryptics such as the Genius.

I also always used pencil when competing in the Times Crossword Championship but I've not managed to take part for some years. I think my fastest solve in those championships was in York in 1980 when the first puzzle had lots of medical references and I was the first to finish, in under six minutes. I was so shocked I had a quick whisky while waiting for others to finish (those were the days when there were four puzzles with breaks in between) - I couldn't think straight for the rest of the afternoon and ended up nowhere!

What do you do when you're not writing crosswords?

I'm a musician involved with community music in Cork in various ways including performance and music education. I've recently played piano in a jazz band and sung in a community choir that performs in hospitals, care homes and other situations where people may not otherwise get to hear live music.

I am currently enjoying learning to play pieces from a collection of Twenty-Four Negro Melodies transcribed for the piano by the black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (who also appeared in one of my puzzles).

Anything else you want to say?

My first Guardian puzzle appeared in December 2006, and this happened to be around the same time as Fifteen Squared began blogging. The almost-instant feedback to puzzles is great because it is really valuable to see how puzzles are received by solvers and to feel that there is a crossword community of sorts to which we all belong, solvers and setters alike.

Now having the additional comments facility on the puzzles themselves and also your posts, it is so much more rewarding than when the only feedback would be the occasional letter sent via the editor. Although of course it is always nice to receive them as well!

Many thanks to Puck - for the hat-tip to this blog and for the eclectic playlist, and chiefly for taking part and giving such insight into his mysterious mind.